The Right Time
by amyniknak
Summary: Written for the Trash to Treasure ficathon at LJ loonybottom my prompt was Clocks. NevilleLuna. Set after Deathly Hallows. Neville and Luna spend some time in the Room of Requirement, but something isn't quite right.


Disclaimer - I don't own Harry Potter.

A/N - Written for a ficathon over at LJ's loonybottom community. My prompt was Clocks.

I don't particularly like this fic very much. Just so you know. But whenever I post something I think is awful, at least some people seem to like it, so meh. Anyway, this is set during the year after Deathly Hallows ends, when Luna is a seventh-year and Neville goes back for certain lessons, namely Defence against the Dark Arts and Herbology, spending the rest of his time helping at the Ministry as JK Rowling said he does.

Anyway, I hope you like this more than I did. Reviews are nice.

**The Right Time**

"What time is it?"

Neville looked up from his book "Little-Known Properties of Woodland Flora" to find Luna in the chair beside him looking quizzically at him. He yawned, and glanced to where his watch usually was on his wrist.

"My watch broke Luna. I told you." He said, rubbing his eyes. How late was it? He was exhausted, they must have been in the Room for at least three hours.

Neville's eighth year of education at Hogwarts school was a lot calmer than the last. For one thing, there were to his knowledge no Death-Eaters on the premises, and another, he was finally able to learn. Even if he was only there half the time – for Herbology and DADA – the rest of his time spent helping at the Ministry. He knew his future didn't lie there though.

He was pinning all his hopes on being able to take over from Professor Sprout in five years when she retired, and was spending all his free time reading and researching, the Room of Requirement happy to help, fillimg up with books and comfy chairs whenever he needed it.

Sometimes of an evening, Luna would join him.

Neville liked those evenings best of all.

"Anyway, there's a clock up there." Neville continued, gesturing to the far wall.

"I know, but it's wrong." Luna replied simply, her expression suddenly worried

"What do you mean, it's wrong?"

"It's not right."

Neville sighed. He'd lost his page, and in a huge leather bound book with over two thousand pages it was hardly worth going back to look for it.

Of course, he didn't really mind.

The Room had been too quiet anyway.

"Why isn't it right?" he asked. "It looks about right, we came in after dinner at around half past seven, and the clock says twenty to eleven…"

"No, the clock's wrong." Luna said deliberately. "It only shows the old time. I decided to change."

"Change to what?"

"Boham Time."

"Boham time?"

"Yes. Daddy published a long article about it last week. I showed you it, didn't I?"

Neville cast his mind back to a week earlier. Then he remembered.

"At breakfast? You were saying how it's supposed to help you if you follow Bo… the other time?"

"Yes. But this clocks all wrong and now I'll have to work out the right time."

Neville smiled, and moved close to Luna. He watched her pull out a huge sheet of parchment from her schoolbag, along with her favourite quill, the one that looked as if it could have come from a phoenix.

"Is it hard to work it out?"

"No. But you'll have to help me."

It's not as if I could ever hope to get any work done with Luna here, Neville thought, wishing for a second that he didn't feel this way.

He hadn't really realised how much he had come to care for Luna until they had been separated last year. Before she had just been that strange girl, who never really made any sense and seemed to float through life oblivious of anything that was going on around here.

But more recently, she had become so much more.

"First I'll have to draw the clock as it is." Luna said, sketching a circle on the parchment and waving her wand at it. An exact copy of the clock that was mounted on the wall appeared on the paper, the hands still ticking round.

"Now what?" Neville questioned, leaning over Luna's shoulder.

Just to be able to see the clock better. Nothing to do with Luna.

Nope.

"Well, we have to reverse the direction of the hands. I'll do that, and Neville?"

"Yes?"

"Can you divide seven thousand five hundred and fifty seven by eleven?"

Neville frowned, scratching his head.

"Why?"

Luna sighed, but didn't look up from the parchment that had all of a sudden become covered in her spidery handwriting and the occasional diagram.

"Because that's what you have to do…," she said slowly, as if speaking to a small child.

Neville nodded, all the more bemused, but proceeded to draw out the sum, trying to remember what his grandmother had told him about long division during that summer she'd spent trying to "get a grandson who'd actually amount to something".

It was for Luna after all.

Neville didn't even try to understand what she was talking about half the time. But he liked to think he knew more about Luna, and who she really was, than the rest of the world.

Like the way she wrinkled her nose when concentrating, and the way her teeth ever so slightly protruded from her mouth when she smiled. The way that her writing reflected her mood at the time; right now, it was scrawly, with all the letters different sizes, whereas moments before, when she had been working on her Charms essay, it had been small, with the 'i's dotted with tiny swirls.

"Neville?" Luna questioned, her voice high. "Have you worked it out?"

"Um… one more minute." Neville replied.

---

Five minutes later, Neville concluded that the answer was 687.

"Finally…" Luna mumbled, adding to her diagram something that looked completely unrelated to the number Neville had just calculated.

"Sorry…" Neville mumbled, his face reddening.

"No, it's fine." Luna said, looking up and flashing a smile at Neville, before returning to her drawing.

It was at this point that Neville had to sit down for several seconds before he'd be capable of basic human speech again.

"Finished!" Luna called, in a voice that sounded almost like part of a song. "Can you take the clock off the wall so I can change it?"

"Okay?" Neville answered. He reached up and unhooked the clock from the nail it was hung on, passing it gently to Luna.

"Right. This hand goes here…" Luna muttered, moving the hour hand so it was pointing at the number three. "And this one should be here…"

"So, it's actually three thirty?" Neville asked, smiling slightly.

"Yes." Luna said simply, before turning so that her face was mere inches away from Neville.

"Do you know…" she continued, her eyes looking straight into Neville's. "Between the hours of three and four, according to Boham time, it is the perfect time to be brave, and take a chance."

Neville swallowed, feeling his palms flood with sweat.

"I -is it?" he stuttered, wiping his hands nervously on his trousers.

Luna nodded, and Neville could have sworn she moved closer to him.

He knew exactly what he was supposed to do now. Lean in, and kiss her. And there was nothing he wanted to do more.

Which was why he turned away, and put his book back into his bag.

"It's late. We'd better go…" he murmured, feeling his face burning with embarrassment and pure annoyance at himself.

He had missed it. Missed the perfect opportunity. She had been there, telling him to take a chance, practically instructing him to kiss her, and like a coward, he'd bottled out and pretended to be doing something else.

Why couldn't he just do it? Would it really be so difficult? Someone had to make the first move, and it might as well be him.

As he was considering this, he felt Luna's hand on his arm. He looked up to find her watching him with interest, that smile on her face again.

"Thank you Neville." she said.

And Neville knew exactly why he hadn't done anything. Why he hadn't moved closer, and kissed her, and felt her soft breath against him, and the gentle rhythm of her beating heart.

It was because there was no way that someone as special as Luna Lovegood would ever want someone as ordinary as him. No matter how many snakes he slayed, he would always be that little boy, the little boy too afraid to speak half the time.

"It's fine." He replied quietly, and allowed Luna to lead him out of the Room, and walk her to her Common Room, and hug her for perhaps longer than you would hug a friend before saying goodnight.

Her hair smelled nice, Neville thought, as he trudged up to the Gryffindor dormitories. And her hands had felt nice on his back, and the way she looked at him after he'd whispered goodnight had been nice to.

Maybe this whole Boham time wasn't completely stupid, he mused later, as he lay in bed.

Maybe it was like Luna in a way. You just had to let yourself try to understand.

Yawning, he pulled out the book he had been reading, and opened it to the first page. A folded piece of parchment slid out, into Neville's open hand. He frowned, before opening it.

It was the diagram of Luna's clock, he noticed with a smile. All her calculations, her hard work, her devotion. All crammed into a diagram of a clock.

A diagram that Neville pinned above his bed, so he could look at it, and everything it stood for, before he fell asleep.


End file.
